On his way in, someone offered him $1,000 for his ticket. He wouldn't take it.

Folks from 2009 host Miami check out scene

After the NFL rolls up the carpet in Tampa, the Super Bowl looks toward South Florida, where the game will be played Feb. 7, 2010. It's the Miami area's 10th Super Bowl, but organizers still spent the week in Tampa, gathering dos and don'ts.

"As many times as we've done it, the game evolves," said Bill Talbert, president of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. "The new ideas they generate here, we'll copy them."

There she is …

There's one way to stick out on a media shuttle of sportswriters to Super Bowl XLIII.

Be Miss America.

Yes, Katie Stam is completing a whirlwind month with a surprise Super Bowl ticket. Stam, 22, Miss Indiana, was in Tampa for the week's festivities and on Saturday night, at the Taste of the NFL Party in St. Petersburg, got tickets to Sunday's game.

Stam posed for photographers in front of the Tampa Convention Center before boarding the bus to Raymond James. The photographers said they'd be following her around all day. They probably weren't the only ones.

Capitalism comes alive on Dale Mabry

From the twins trying to sell parking spaces to get cell phone money to the Temple Terrace Papa John's that dispatched mobile pie sellers to the stadium, lots of entrepreneurs were trying to cash in on Sunday's game. How was business? It depends.

Bill Edington, area supervisor for Sonny's Bar-B-Q, said business is similar to that for a Bucs game, though thousands more people are walking on his restaurant's property.

"It's hit or miss," he said. "The locals sure aren't coming out."

Rod Cunningham, meanwhile, was selling Barack Obama posters, hats and a "Barack Star" tank top from a prime spot on Himes Avenue. Football fans weren't that interested.

"It's mediocre," he said. "I don't think this was a day for Barack. Everybody's looking for Pittsburgh Steelers merchandise."

Who needs the game when you can crash?

Balint Varga of St. Petersburg found a creative way to keep himself entertained.

He arrived to tailgate dressed in a helmet, shoulder pads and a Jerome Bettis Steelers jersey.

The fun lasted until K.C. Tolson decided to play strong safety and lowered a shoulder into the shopping cart, sending Varga into a parked car.

Turned out he needed that helmet after all.

Strange sights

• NASCAR truck series champion Johnny Benson buying a beer and toting a sweater around in a plastic grocery bag. It was chilly, but wouldn't a racer's fire suit be warmer?

• A woman in a Cardinals jersey jumping in front of a tailgate of Steelers fans posing for a photographer … and all of them having a hearty laugh about it. Eagles fans would have chased her down Himes Avenue like a scene out of 28 Days Later. Cardinals fans seemed genuinely happy just to be here, and the Steelers legions were a pretty amiable lot.